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Learn to Use It!
by: David Wahlman of Wahlman Photography
Recently I was asked about the process of converting images to black & white; namely when to know the image would be good for it. So in this post I’m going to talk about when to convert an image to black & white and then how to do it in Photoshop without losing quality.
When To Create A Black & White Image
There are three ideas that come to my mind when I evaluate whether I should convert an image to black & white.
- First of all, and somewhat obviously, what is your desired outcome? Is your client specifically asking for b&w images? Are you entering a b&w photo contest? Are you doing a gallery set of b&w (because, generally speaking it doesn’t look too good to have just one or two b&w mixed in with colors. You want a good balance)? Like I said, it should be pretty obvious that your outcome needs to be considered, but it was worth saying.
- Second, you should consider the value range of the image. In photography the term “value” speaks of darks vs lights. So when I say to judge the image’s value range, I’m talking about if you have deep blacks and bright whites. What’s your dynamic range like? For the most part ‘flat’ images don’t look very good in b&w. Traditional b&w have good contrast and well spread value all across the histogram. So if your image has these elements then it may be a good choice for converting into a b&w.
- I’ll be doing a post soon on color theory and color relationship, but if you have odd colors or colors that don’t work well together, then it may be a good candidate for being converted to b&w. Let’s face it, some colors don’t really work well together. B&W may be a good way to avoid these colors but keep the great shot.
- A quick tip, if you squint your eyes while looking at an image, you will see less color and more of the total value. This can be good for getting an idea of if your image has good value range.
How To Convert A Color Image To Black & White
Now lets talk about how to convert your image – there is a right and wrong way.
You may get the same result, but if you do it wrong you actually loose quality (to be technical, you sacrifice bytes of information).
For this article I’m going to be talking about using Adobe Photoshop. There is conversion software that you can buy, but for all intensive purposes, why pay extra when you can do it in Photoshop really easily.
Step 1
If you have found an image that you want to convert, then step one is opening the image in Photoshop. For my example, I’m using one of my wedding photographs that you may have seen on my website. It was shot during the first dance.
Step 2
Most people would try to go to the top menu, go to Image>Mode and change the color profile to “Grayscale.”
Don’t do this!
Long story short, you’re actually changing the color profile, which means you will lose pixel information in your colors. You don’t want that; you want to retain as much information in your image as possible.
What you do want to do is use the black & white adjustments.
You can access this either by going to the top menu to Image>Adjustments>Black&White or in your side bar click on the adjustments button (as shown in picture) and then click on the b&w icon, which is the black and white box divided diagonally.
Step 3
Once you’ve clicked this, you should see adjustments for the value of each color (see image). Notice that Photoshop has kept track of colors in the image. It’s just displaying them as b&w, but your keeping the information in tact.
This also gives you more control on editing your b&w cause you can adjust it by color section now.
Be aware, that you don’t want to push the limits on these colors too much, you’ll start to see ‘clipping’ in gradient colors such as skies. You’ll see it in your preview as you do it, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Step 4
After this, you can use these other adjustments (which act as smart layers, if you know what that means) to adjust the image how ever you need; exposure, contrast, levels, curves, filters, etc.
Step 5
After you’ve done all the editing you feel you need to do you should hopefully have an image you’re pleased with as a final. From you there you can save it.
David Wahlman is a wedding and portrait photographer from Redding, CA. He works all around California and is aiming to get into destination photography. You can see his best work at www.wahlmanphotography.com and follow his updates on his facebook page.
@lee that's not my understanding of what "split toning" is. From what I know, toning is when you "tone" or color tint the image - so split toning is toning it in two different tones. Tone refers to color tint and in the days of film and dark room toning was done with chemicals like sepia or selenium, I've used both and you could do split toning but it was a lot more difficult than it is now with digital.
I think what you're referring to is often called luminosity masking.
http://goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html
I always use split toning ... ie use two adjustment layers (ie 2 b&w adjustments). One layer to control the shadows and the other to control the mids and highlights. Then blend accordingly (soft light etc).
Sorry I meant to follow directions for converting to b/w using the info above or on my article using LR.
https://digital-photography-school.com/3-tips-for-better-black-and-white-conversion-using-lightroom
Then flatten the image, and then convert to CMYK.
Does that help?
@Darlene - If I convert the image to a CMYK it doesn't allow me to use the option told here for a black and white conversion. The B/W adjustment is greyed out. This is why I was asking if there was a way to convert a CMYK image without converting to grey scale and with out using a different program than photoshop.
thanks
@jason - OH! for 4 color presses!
You can do a "convert profile" and choose CMYK. There isn't another way of doing it that I know of, but you still wanna use this process to convert from color to b/w, then convert that to CMYK.
Who's the printer? Often they can accept RGB files and convert them for you.
@Darlene - I use images that have to get printed in a four-color process. So if i just convert the way it is stated here (RGB) the image would get converted when printed and look different. So i was wonder if there was something similair for a CMYK black and white.
@jason - what is a four color b/w? you lost me
What if I want a four color B/W?
Thanks for your enlightening blog.
Thanks Doug!
"why pay extra when you can do it in Photoshop really easily."
Did you really just say "why use something that costs a little bit of money when you can use something that costs many hundreds of dollars?"
I don't think you understand what you are saying. Also, please look up words and phrases before you use them. Blake already hit all the major errors that were bugging me, so I won't repeat them.
Last thing, someone already linked to it, but there was a B/W conversion tutorial on here not too long ago, and it was basically the same method, except it was a much better article. Oh, I see that Darlene was the author of it. Good job Darlene. :)
For us lesser mortals using PSE, there is a really good function 'convert to black and white' which then offers the user a number of pre-set contrast variations before you can tweak then for further refinement.
I use Lightroom, they have nice default B&W converter.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisverana/8620463174/in/photostream
@lynzie a link for you to how to do it in Lightrooom is right below your comment
@moe no you have no control over how the various tones in the scene get rendered and most often you end up with a flat image. Read my article on doing it in Lightroom I show the difference it can make especially if you have blue sky in your image
What about just sliding the saturation all the way to no color. Is that a bad way to convert a photo to Black and White?
If you are a Lightroom person you could also try this method
https://digital-photography-school.com/3-tips-for-better-black-and-white-conversion-using-lightroom
Does anyone know how, or know where a tutorial exists, that shows this method in LR?
My method for b/w conversion has been to desaturate the image using the hue/saturation feature in Photoshop. This allows me to go back in with a photo filter later if I want to go with a sepia tone. This might be a good suggestion for me if it allows me to use the filter later. Some of my pictures work best with that brown tone instead of full color or b/w.
If I had to do all those steps I would never make any images B&W. Here is yet another vote to add to the others in the comments for Silver Efex Pro. I even wrote a few years ago why I love it:
http://jasoncollinphotography.com/blog/2009/11/11/why-i-love-silver-efex-pro-3-by-nik-software.html
@David Coward - there's more!? I just had a brief look!
@Blake: You missed a couple of things. But yeah, it's really distracting to read an article with bad spelling. Admittedly, I've seen much worse, but a professional site should have a proofreader.
One can only hope the horrible grammar is an April fools joke.
@Blake
April Fools! I think? It must be.
Doesn't an editor proof-read these articles before they go up? If not, START DOING IT.
"how to do it in Photoshop without loosing quality."
LOSING.
"There is conversion software that you can buy, but for all intensive purposes"
ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES.
"It’s just displaying them as b&w, but your keeping the information in tack."
YOU'RE. INTACT.
Seriously, guys.
Once I got lightroom this is how I do it every time now. Feels good to know I am doing something right for a change. LOL. Great article. Thanks
Nik's Silverefex is great. However, I think it's beneficial to learn how to do these things yourself, so you understand what's happening in the plug-ins. It gives you more control in the end.
I am with you Andrew. Silverefex Pro is definitely the way to go if you are serious about black and white conversion. While I love and use all of Nik's products (www.niksoftware.com), the Silverefex Pro saves me hour in the digital darkroom. Even if you only use the presets provided, you can emulate just about any old B/W film, as well as doing a great job of grain simulation if you still love the look and feel of the film days.
I kinda see where this article is going, the main point is don't use grey scale, and definitely don't use the B/W option on your camera (you will lose all that colour information). However, you don't have to use photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture can both do this, but if you want REALLY good results, use Silverefex Pro 2 from Nik software (which you can pick up as a bundle now for $126 from google). I shot thousands of toles of B/W film in the 80's abd 90's abd I really didn't get results that looked anything much like the B/W film I used to shoot until I started using Silverefex Pro. I'm sure I'm sure I will get trolled for that statement but whatever. A good tip to add to this is if you are specifically trying to shoot B/W, create a high contrast B/W profile in your camera and shoot raw. You can use the B/W preview created in your camera to give you an idea if the image will work as B/W but the raw image has all the colour information so when you upload to Lightroom/Aperture you actually have a colour image to work with. This can help you get the correct exposure you need to create a great B/W image as you often need to under (or sometimes) over expose to get and image that will work well.
The method I've used for a while is to convert to lab color, go to channels, copy the lightness channel, convert back to RGB, and paste. It's pretty straightforward and gets generally good results. Certainly far better than converting to greyscale.